SPEAKER_00: 0:10

If you were into subdivisions or thinking, how can you undertake one? This is the episode for you. I've got Micah in a house. Hello, Micah. Hi there. Happy New Year.

SPEAKER_01: 0:22

Happy New Year. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Thank you for coming. It's been a while.

SPEAKER_01: 0:25

It has, yeah. You know, just before Christmas.

SPEAKER_00: 0:28

Yes. So you're here today to talk to us about subdivisions.

SPEAKER_01: 0:32

Yeah, particularly smaller infill subdivisions. So you asked me what infill meant before. So an infill is where you are maybe in suburbia, there's a single house on a larger plot of land, and you're looking at your backyard or front yard going, oh, can I put something there maybe? So that would be considered an infill house. And it's kind of topical because people may be aware the government has recently made it easier for infill houses to take place. Now, this is a slightly separate topic, like you know, those sort of granny flats, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06

And that will be the episode two of today's session.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09

We can squeeze that in. That's a slightly different topic because there are lots of sort of restrictions around that. They're saying you don't need a consent. You don't need a consent, but the number of conditions you need to meet for that to happen often doesn't apply. Like, not so much in Wellington. Wellington's a very special case because of the topography, it's a bit more difficult, but we can cover that in detail. So I'm more thinking of, yeah, you're looking at your front yard going, I don't really want to just put a little granny flat there or something. I'm interested in building a home or something, you know, something for the longer term. How do I go about that?

SPEAKER_00: 1:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44

And so, yeah, it'll it sits a little bit on my personal experience from my own house. Maybe I should just yeah, give a quick overview of that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:53

Let's yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54

My great friends, they bought a very classic turn of the century bungalow in Wellington on 600 square meters. Not huge, but not tiny. And when I first saw it, I was like, you've got a garage out the front. I kind of reckon I could build a house there. So that's where the whole process started. And you know, many conversations later, we did the subdivision. I built the house on this tiny plot of land, it's about a hundred square meters. We covered that in more detail in another episode. But yeah, so I I really am a firm believer in yeah, using space well, looking at, you know, these leftover veggie patches that maybe aren't getting used, or south-facing banks that are, you know, just covered in gauze, or garages that aren't used, and going, well, actually, how can we use this asset better?

SPEAKER_00: 2:48

How can we maximize?

SPEAKER_01: 2:50

Absolutely. And I mean, in a time of like when we need homes, people are thinking of downsizing, or maybe they have kids that are wanting to get into their own place, yeah, it's actually quite topical. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 3:04

Okay, so let's let's go a little bit deeper into how the subdivisions actually work. So let's say your friends got that piece of land, they were like, cool, Micah, we can give you, we can cut it off, but how does it actually work on the other end of the spectrum?

SPEAKER_01: 3:22

So I guess probably the the first thing I want to like lean into is like the subdivision, it's kind of like a bureaucratic thing. There's a there's a line in the sand that we draw and saying, okay, that's yours, this is mine. But more than that, it's you're building a house, you're building a place to live, you're building a lifestyle. So I think what I kind of want to lean into is the importance of having the bigger picture right before we go drawing lines in the sand and dealing with lawyers and and the like. Particularly when we're dealing with small subdivisions. Like we're not thinking of like the outskirts of Christchurch, where you have thousands of homes on like four or five hundred square meters or that sort of thing. I'm thinking of smaller, tighter developments within an existing suburbia with houses all around. You've got neighbors to consider, you've got the host house you need to consider, you need to protect the asset that you're lopping the land off.

SPEAKER_00: 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:24

I think a lot of people sort of forget about this bigger picture where we're we're working in a context here, building lives and wanting to protect the asset of the main house. I just my heart sinks when I see places where there's this like beautiful old home and they've gone and built this massive thing out the front, and then all of a sudden the living room's looking into someone else's bathroom two and a half meters away. It might my heart sinks. And like, so yeah, I just sort of want to lean into getting the bigger picture of building a home that'll be there for a long time and building livelihoods.

SPEAKER_00: 5:00

So yeah, I like that because you're right, like you've got to sort of think ahead what is the end goal, what is it gonna look like? What are you trying to achieve before you go down the rabbit hole of spending money on consultants, on surveyors, on architects, on architects, even like yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:19

So I think it's like it's even more important when we're dealing with infill, like we're talking about before, or something that's actually really small. Because the smaller the constraints, the more you've got to lean into the end result and the design to get that right. Because you you you kind of box yourself, box yourself into a corner if you're not careful. And you don't want to build something that's terrible because it'll be there for 50 years, a hundred years. No one wants to look at somebody else's bathroom for a hundred years.

SPEAKER_00: 5:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:50

So with our own subdivision, so yeah, it was a hundred square meters that we lopped off. So the council looked at it sideways and they were like, Whoa, not sure about that.

SPEAKER_00: 6:02

100. Did you just say 100 square meters?

SPEAKER_01: 6:05

100 square meters is our bit of land. How big is your house? The house is 60, 62 square meters.

SPEAKER_00: 6:11

So you put a 62 square meter house on a 100 square meter plot of land.

SPEAKER_01: 6:16

So it's got a really small footprint, it's three stories high, and you might be going, Whoa, how does that not block the views of everyone of the neighbors and that kind of thing? We actually spent a lot of time on the design to really get it right. And the roof level is set below the floor level of the other houses around it. Oh, wow. For example. So, like there were real constraints that we put in place. We didn't want to max out the side, build the most that we could, and be terrible neighbours to everyone. Yeah. And be terrible neighbours to my friends up the back.

SPEAKER_00: 6:46

I was about to say your friends would have regretted that execution.

SPEAKER_01: 6:49

So it was about really, yeah, preserving their asset and doing something good and being smart about how we did it.

SPEAKER_00: 6:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:57

So I do want to lean into the idea that the smaller the plot of land, the or maybe the the more sort of maybe the steeper the plot of land or the more complex the subdivision, the earlier design input is important. And that's also from a very practical, boring council perspective. And this kind of ties in a little bit with your field about giving loans and the like. So essentially the council want to know that you can get a compliant dwelling on a plot of land. And when they looked at mine, they saw 100 square meters and they were like, there is no way you can get a compliant dwelling on that plot of land. If you want to build something, we'll make the consent process really hard for you, and we'll make it even harder still, because we're going to say you have to build the house first, and only then are you allowed to subdivide it. So just to sort of rewind, they were saying effectively, because it was tricky, I needed to build the house first and subdivide later. So that means I'm building a house on someone else's piece of land.

SPEAKER_00: 8:03

And that doesn't work. No, it does not because you don't own that piece of land. So therefore, when we're applying for a mortgage, we're essentially funding someone else's piece of land. So we can't do that at all.

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

So the bank just so from a lending perspective, it doesn't work. It just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00: 8:21

No. So the land has to be in your name.

SPEAKER_01: 8:25

Exactly, yeah. So for this process, I used my design skills to develop a compliant dwelling on this small pot of land. So that the council would say, Okay, we're satisfied now. We'll let you subdivide first and build later, which unlocked the lending process for me.

SPEAKER_00: 8:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 8:47

So that was where I guess an architect's knowledge of the district plan rules and planning came into play to be able to design something that was compliant to satisfy those requirements and unlock the whole process.

SPEAKER_00: 9:01

So they couldn't say no to.

SPEAKER_01: 9:03

No. I I ticked the boxes. Yeah. I had no intention of building this compliant dwelling. We went through a resource consent process to get to be able to get a bit of leniency on some of the rules.

SPEAKER_00: 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:16

But it was part of the process to make it all happen, essentially.

SPEAKER_00: 9:21

So And that's the thing, right? Like if you have the right specialist in your corner and you know how to play by the rules, essentially you will get to that position that will allow you to do X, Y, Z. Yeah. But if you don't know that and if you don't know where to turn to, then you are stuck.

SPEAKER_01: 9:40

It it can be really tricky. So yeah, I I think I think like thinking ahead about the end result, what you want to achieve, lends itself to getting a designer involved early and then leaning again into the architect skills to unlock the whole potential of the site. And yeah, this the smaller it is, the trickier it is, and the more you want to like really preserve the the the amenity of your of the existing house, you know, your biggest asset.

SPEAKER_00: 10:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:10

That's a really important step to take it.

SPEAKER_00: 10:11

Because subdivisions are not cheap either. They they do come with a cost of on average 30,000 or more. Depends on the council, depends on the region in New Zealand. So people also underestimate that cost.

SPEAKER_01: 10:24

Absolutely. Yeah, it might just be a line in the sand, like we said, but yep, there's some serious, some serious investment. But I mean, on the flip side, you're you're unlocking something that can host a house. Like it's um I've we've with our friends up the back, we've yeah, we've unlocked not only a little plot of land for me to build on, we've actually created a bit of a community there. Like it's it's I I love having my friends up the back. And and it doesn't apply just to sort of friends, you could imagine it being an inter generational situation. Or maybe I've had another client come to me and talk about. So for now we want it to be a rental and we actually won't subdivide, but in the future it might be for my parents, or maybe we'll shift into the smaller house and then sell the bigger house as our as our kids leave home. So it sort of unlocked a lot of possibilities there. Classic.

SPEAKER_00: 11:19

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much, Monica. We'll wrap this one up. That might be our cue. There's a phone ringing for those that have no idea what's going on in the background. Funny enough, it's actually we'll give a shout out to Rachel. She's a property manager, she's giving me a call, probably about one of my properties in Living. On this note, guys, thank you so much for listening in. And we will come back with Monica and we will expand on what those infill houses are. Thank you. Bye.

SPEAKER_01: 11:46

Good one.